5 things I learned on the road...

So my trip across country actually went fairly smoothly. We made it right on schedule, the kids were really pretty reasonable given the circumstances, I only had minor car trouble ( on the first and last day) unfortunately that is going to result in me replacing my windshield. BUT at least it wasn't a full on accident like we had driving out there last October!

As in every experience, you learn a few things along the a way. This trip spanning a large chunk of the US taught me:

1)  Piglet is a crappy teether. I thought that Pollyanna was bad....but I think the piercing nature of his screams adds a whole new level of pain to a pretty painful experience. I'm still working on recovering from my ear infection ( gonna go check it out at the Dr. again this week) and I am still hearing ringing in my ears. Poor guy :/ I certainly am glad that we don't remember the pain of teething!!

2) You will gain at least 5 lbs on a road trip like that... purely because of the water retention! Which is a pain in the rear end when you've painstakingly lost only like 15lbs over the course of 5 months, and would like to keep it off before your husband returns! Not to mention your family running a " Biggest Loser" competition and you are already at the end of the pack in the first place! BLAH!

3) Holiday Inn Express is, as my SIL would call it, a' false sense of happiness'.:) Meaning... the rooms are like a ray of sunshine after a long day in the cramped car! The beds are comfy, the breakfast food is delish...and then you have to pack yourself up and hit the road again... not really knowing if you are going to see another feather pillow that night, or cinnamon bun the next morning. False. Sense. Of Happiness.

4) Cara-vanning is mildly unpleasant and will give you dead leg. It is fairly impossible for two cars to be able to maintain the same speed on cruise control. During the long, lonely states of the west, like Wyoming and Nebraska, I was able to keep up with my parents car through manipulation of the computer system in my own car. However once we passed Kansas City, there was too much traffic on the highways for me to rely on the slow application of the breaks through my cars computer system. I made a mental note to bring a second driver in your car if you are cara-vanning across country. :)

5) Farm houses in Ohio look a heck of a lot different then their counterparts in Pennsylvania. My internet is receiving a crappy signal right now ( seriously, I'll be lucky if it'll publish this!) or I would show you some pictures. But we've all seen the old farms, right? They're usually white, and older looking, large houses with a big barn and maybe a silo, a dirt driveway, with acres of land surrounding them. That's what you saw in Pennsylvania. In Ohio however...the farm houses were like...contemporary, and NEW! They were huge, modern houses, with stucco and rock "siding" on the outside, huge attached 4 or 6 car garages, big windows and newly paved driveways, and usually a new "shed" type building in the back of their huge driveways that I assume held all the farm equipment...though you couldn't tell everything was so immaculate. The ONLY thing that clued you in the the fact that they were farms was the acres of plowed land surrounding each one of them. Really, they made me kind of wonder about farming subsidies ( a topic on a news show I watched recently) the government gives. I planned to do a little research before I posted this so I could state the facts about  how much Ohio farmers vs. Pennsylvania farmers get from the government...I didn't though because my kids are crazy now that we're home. ( Go figure :) ) I have a fishy feeling that Ohio probably excepts more of those subsidies then Pennsylvania does...but I could be wrong :)

Anyway...ha! those were just a few of my many and varied thoughts as I crosses the US in my effort to get home!

Until next time!